After spending more than 30 years on death row, Anthony Todd Boyd was executed by nitrogen hypoxia in Alabama. But the crime that brought him to that execution chamber started on a sweltering Saturday in 1993 when a panicked phone call turned into a deadly hunt. A decision that would end with one of the most brutal murders Tallaladega  County had ever seen.

That afternoon, Anthony reached out to a friend, 22-year-old Dwinon Quinte Cox, and claimed he had been robbed. He said he knew who did it, and now he needed help finding the guy. When Quinty pulled up to the Glenn Attie Apartments, Anthony was already there, agitated and pacing.

 He said the man who stole from him was Dexter Spinx,  and that all he needed was a gun and someone to ride with him. Quinte left and came back with a Mac 11, a compact rapid fire pistol designed for intimidation more than precision. And with that, the hunt began. Robert Sha Ingram joined them and the three piled into his car.

 They started driving, block after block, circling neighborhoods for over half an hour, searching for Dexter. But they couldn’t find him. Not yet. While driving, they crossed paths with Monnique Marcel Ackles, who was behind the wheel of a blue Chevy Astro van. Marcel joined in and they moved everyone over into the van.

 They kept driving, still looking for Dexter, but came up empty again. Then, as they rolled down 15th Street, something else caught their eye. Near a patch of trees by the area folks called Happy Tree stood Gregory Hugaly, known to most as New York. A few days earlier, he had taken drugs from Anthony, but he never paid up. He owed him $200.

 And now that Anthony was all riled up and couldn’t find Dexter, that was all it took. Here stood Gregory, and without hesitation, Shawn grabbed the gun, jumped out of the van, and shouted at him. Gregory froze. He already knew why they were there. And he raised his hands. “Please don’t kill me,” he begged. “Just beat me.” But Shawn wasn’t listening.

 He just grabbed Gregory by the shirt, shoved him into the van, slammed the door, and they took off. Inside, Gregory lay on the floor, still  begging. “Don’t kill me. I’ll get your money.” But mercy wasn’t on the agenda that day. They made a quick stop to fill a plastic container with gasoline.

 And then they headed to Hall Grove Ballpark. Shawn still held the gun when they yanked Gregory from the van and forced him onto a wooden bench. Marcel taped his hands and mouth while Anthony secured his feet and once bound, Gregory was face down on the bench and helpless. He was begging for his life, but everyone ignored him.

Then Shawn splashed gasoline over Gregory and poured a short trail leading away from the bench. Then he lit a match. The fire jumped instantly, racing up the line and igniting Gregory’s clothes. Gregory screamed and twisted, but the others didn’t help. They just stood there watching. For 10, maybe 15 minutes. No one moved.

 Not until Gregory rolled off the bench and stopped moving. When it was over, they all climbed back into the van. As they drove back toward Aniston, the night closing in around them, Anthony broke the silence. He looked out the window and said, “Well, we’re all in this together now. If one goes down, we all go down.” It was already dark when Quinty dropped him off at the Glen Addie Apartments around 8:00 p.m.

 He drove home alone after that, trying not to think about what he had just seen. But there was no escaping it. The image of Gregory’s body lit up like a bonfire in a quiet field was burned into his memory for good. The next morning on August 1st, Jesse Smith headed out to the Hall Grove Ballpark in Tallaladega County with a few friends.

 It was a quiet patch of open land surrounded by trees, a place where families came on weekends and kids played ball. But that day, before he saw anything, he smelled it. Smoke mixed with something sour, something wrong. Then he found it. Near the benches under the summer sun lay what was left of a human body, burned, twisted,  and blackened against the dirt.

 Jesse didn’t hesitate. He ran to the nearest phone and called the Tallaladega County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies arrived fast, sealing off the field with yellow tape. They photographed everything, the burned ground, the melted wood, and the trail of ash that told its own story. But the evidence was thin.

 Investigators found two fingerprints at the scene. But when the lab reports came back, they matched a local investigator who had handled the materials himself. Still, by then, the story had already started spreading through town. At first it was just whispers, but whispers turned into talk. And talk turned into tips.

 And it didn’t take long before names surfaced. Anthony Boyd, Robert Sha Ingram, Monnique Marcel Ackles, and Dwinan Quinte Cox. And the motive that emerged was cruel and pointless. And once they were in handcuffs, it didn’t take much for them to start pointing fingers. But the physical evidence told its own story.

 According to the state medical examiner, Gregory’s tongue, throat, and epiglatus were burned and swollen, and there was soot inside his trachea. That meant Gregory had been alive when the fire started, breathing in smoke as his body burned, and the tape marks were still visible on his right arm and across his mouth.

 The cause of death had been determined as thermal burns. Toxicology tests added another layer. They revealed traces of alcohol, cocaine, and cokeethylene, a chemical formed when both are used together. It meant Gregory had been under the influence when he died. Likely confused, maybe even unaware, just how fast everything was unraveling.

But in the courtroom, the story was brutal and unmistakable. The evidence laid bare a man who had begged for his life, tied down, silenced, and burned alive, then dumped in a public park like garbage, left for strangers to find. The trial held in Tallaladega County, Alabama, began in 1995, almost 2 years after Gregory’s murder.

 And from the start, it drew attention across the state. Not just because of how brutal it was, but because of how carefully prosecutors said the whole thing had been planned by Anthony and his  codefendants. Anthony was charged with capital murder, an intentional killing committed during a first-degree kidnapping.

 He didn’t know what hit him. I didn’t even know Alabama had the death penalty, he later said. When they told me it was capital murder, I said, what is that? All in capital letters. But prosecutors weren’t laughing. They told the court this wasn’t some outofc control moment or random violence. This crime was deliberate, organized, and meant to send a message.

 The motive, they said, was simple. Gregory had taken about $200 worth of cocaine from Anthony without paying for it. And for them, that was reason enough to kill him. They said Anthony helped restrain Gregory and didn’t just go along with it. He was in it from the start. One witness remembered Anthony saying, “We’re all in this together now.

” The defense had little to work with. They mentioned Anony’s age. He was just 24 at the time, and brought up his troubled past. But those arguments carried little weight. His attorneys tried to minimize his role, saying he wasn’t the one who lit the fire or made the plan. But the state pushed back hard, arguing that he was just as responsible as anyone else who took part.

 Later, they tried to take it back. During appeals, Anony’s lawyers claimed he was at a party the night of the murder. And Anthony never changed his story. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in any killing,” he said. But by then, the damage was done, and the jury had already made up its mind. After several days of testimony, they returned a guilty verdict.

 Prosecutors had argued that the murder took place during a kidnapping, which under Alabama law automatically qualified the crime for the death penalty, and that single detail  sealed his fate. On August 5th, 1995, the jury recommended the death penalty. Just a few days later, the judge agreed and formally sentenced Anthony Todd Boyd to die in the electric chair, a sentence that would later be converted to nitrogen hypoxia under Alabama’s updated law.

Shawn got the death penalty, too. Out of everyone involved, he was the one everyone feared most. The one who came up with the plan and set everything in motion. It was Shawn who held the gun, grabbed Gregory off the street, and shoved him into that van. And when they got to the ballpark, he was the one who poured the gasoline and lit the match.

Prosecutors called him the leader, the executioner, and the jury agreed. Shawn never denied what happened. He just said Gregory deserved it. Now more than 30 years later, he is still on death row at Holman Correctional Facility, waiting for the same fate Anthony met. Marcel’s fate looked different.

 He wasn’t the one who lit the fire, but he was behind the wheel of the blue Astro van. He helped tape Gregory down and stood by as the flames consumed the bench. The law still held him accountable, but saw his role as less direct. Marcel took a plea deal, avoiding the death penalty by agreeing to testify.

 In exchange, he received life in prison without parole, where he remains to this day. Quinte played the smallest role, but he still had blood on his conscience. He supplied the gun and followed the van in his own car, trailing behind as Gregory was taken toward the park. He claimed he didn’t know how far it would go, but by the time he realized it was already over.

 In court,  Quinty became a state witness. He described the kidnapping step by step and repeated what Anthony had said on the drive back to Aniston. We’re all in this together now. That testimony spared him from a harsher sentence. He was given life with the possibility of parole, a punishment that kept him locked away but didn’t take away hope.

 Since then, he has been released in 2009. Anthony, though, never got that chance. His death sentence remained intact through decades of appeals. The Alabama Supreme Court and later the federal courts reviewed claims of ineffective legal defense and misconduct from prosecutors, but each time they upheld the conviction and the sentence.

 Still, Anthony kept saying he was innocent. He insisted he had nothing to do with Gregory’s death. “It’s easy to paint a picture when you got the paintbrush in your hands.” He said they painted the picture they wanted to paint. And while his family still visits him at Holman, prison life has stripped away much of what he once had.

 His kids are grown now. His grandchildren were born while he sat behind bars. His father died, and so did his grandmother and great-g grandandmother. Time didn’t stop for them just because he was locked away. And now, after all those years, the state has chosen a date. His execution is set on his daughter’s birthday, October 23rd, 2025.

His execution would be carried out using nitrogen gas, a method Alabama had only recently started using. The process involved strapping a mask tightly over his face and pumping in pure nitrogen, cutting off the oxygen he needed to survive. Anthony had asked to be executed by firing squad instead, but the courts denied that request.

 On his final day, he spent time with two of his daughters, his mother, his brother, three friends, a son-in-law, and his spiritual adviser. He also made phone calls to a brother, and a close friend. Throughout the day, he was seen eating a mix of snacks, a cheeseburger, barbecue Fritos, popcorn, a Reese’s cup,  Skittles, Starburst, and a cheeseburger.

 He drank a strawberry sun-kissed, dole lemonade, orange V8 splash, water, and coffee. He ate breakfast and lunch but turned down his dinner. He also didn’t request a final meal. Later that evening, corrections officers led him into the execution chamber. The curtain to the witness room opened at 5:50 p.m. Anthony looked out and smiled toward the four witnesses present, his brother and three members of the media.

 He gave a thumbs up and flashed a hand sign. When asked if he had any final words, he used the moment to declare his innocence and call out the justice system. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody,” he said. He criticized the courts saying they weren’t fair. “There’s no justice in this state.

 It’s all political. It’s revenge motivated.” Anthony said, “It’s not about closure because closure comes from within, not an execution.” He ended his final statement, “Keep fighting. I love every single one of y’all.” And his final words before the mask sealed shut were, “Let’s get it.” Then the gas began to flow.

 At about 5:57 p.m., Anony’s body started to react. He clenched his fist and raised his head slightly off the gurnie. Then his legs rose several inches. A few minutes later, he began taking deep, labored breaths. long uneven gasps that went on for at least 15 minutes. Then finally, he stopped moving. At 6:27 p.m., the curtain to the chamber closed.

The prison’s commissioner later explained that the nitrogen gas continued for five full minutes after the heart stops just to be sure. He was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. Anthony Todd Boyd was 56 years old. What do you think? Has justice been served?